"The EU Has Failed the Arab World"

German magazine Der Spiegel notes how the European Union has been propping up dictators in North Africa in the interest of stability. Now the divided EU is struggling to respond to the popular uprisings. The magazine describes the debate in the EU foreign ministers´ meeting on February 20:

But, as is typical in the European Union, the meeting turned into a heated dispute. Right after Lady Ashton finished reporting on recent talks she had had in Cairo and Tunis, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini piped up. He spoke about the unrest in Libya, a country he claimed to know particularly well. He claimed that Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi was the only person who could guarantee the country's stability. The most important thing for now, he said, was preserving the country's territorial integrity. His colleagues from Greece and Malta seconded his opinion.

After that, the room fell silent. Germany's Werner Hoyer, a senior Foreign Ministry official who was attending the dinner as a stand-in for German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, was one of the first to resume the conversation. "If that were our position, it would be a massive mistake and a betrayal of our fundamental values," he said. "Instead of worrying about Gadhafi, we should be happy when he's gone." (NNoN: Well spoken, Dr Hoyer!)

For weeks, a blossoming democratic movement in North Africa has been toppling one dictator after the other -- first in Tunisia, then in Egypt, now possibly in Libya. During this whole period, the reaction of Europe's governments can best be described as paralyzed. While Gadhafi's regime was ordering its forces to fire upon its own people, the reactions of the political elites -- whether in Brussels, Berlin, Paris or Rome -- were unsure, divided and without a plan.
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When it comes to determining Europe's policies in North Africa, national interests trump the principles expounded in the EU treaties. In regard to its former North African colonies, France still considers itself a regional power player. Malta and Cyprus have long-standing worries about stampedes of illegal immigrants. Italy made Libya one of its preferred trading partners.
As a token of his appreciation, Gadhafi has made massive investments in Italy in recent years. Libya owns a 7.2 percent stake in Unicredit, Italy's largest bank, 2 percent of Finmeccanica, Italy's most important arms manufacturer, and another 2 percent of FIAT, its largest automotive company. Libya also owns a 7 percent stake in Juventus Turin, the publicly traded and massively popular football club. Similarly, more than 100 Italian companies are active in Libya, including the oil and gas giant Eni, the transportation electronics company Ansaldo STS and the construction company Impregilo.

Read the entire article here.

Foreign journalists detained in China

The growing number attacks on foreign journalists is a clear sign of how nervous China´s communist rulers are about the possibility of new anti-government demonstrations spreading  into China in the wake of the popular uprisings in the arab countries:

New York, February 28, 2011--Chinese security officials' concerted attack on the foreign press in a busy commercial street near Tiananmen Square in Beijing Sunday is a return to the restrictions international reporters faced before they were eased in the run-up to the 2008 Olympics, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.   

 Police briefly detained more than a dozen foreign journalists and assaulted at least two at the site of a planned anti-government protest in Beijing on Sunday, according to international news reports. All were released after a few hours. Anonymous appeals for "Jasmine"-themed protests in Chinese cities, based on popular uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, began circulating online on February 19. The authors of the appeals call for an end to government corruption and an independent judiciary.

Men in plainclothes punched and kicked an unidentified Bloomberg journalist, confiscated his video camera, and detained him in a nearby store, according to the news agency. He sought treatment in a local hospital for unspecified injuries, Bloomberg reported. A journalist with Taiwanese television station Sanli TV sustained a shoulder injury when he and a female colleague were thrown into a van and detained shortly after 1 p.m., according to Radio France Internationale. They were released after 6 p.m., RFI reported.

The Foreign Correspondents Club of China said journalists were warned by telephone to seek special permission from the Wangfujing district office to report from the site, a popular shopping center. The club did not specify who the warnings came from, and said security officials had been unable to provide contact information for a police or other security office in Wangfujing where reporters could seek permission. The year before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, authorities issued regulations allowing foreign journalists to report without prior authorization on Chinese "politics, economy, society and culture," although the regulations are sometimes ignored, particularly in sensitive regions like the Tibetan Autonomous Region, according to CPJ research. 

"This is the worst aggression against the foreign press we've seen since the Olympics in 2008," said Bob Dietz, CPJ's Asia program coordinator. "Such a heavy-handed response discredits the ruling Chinese Communist Party and highlights their fear of popular opposition."

Read the entire article in the Committee to Protect Journalist website here.

Gaddafi zenga zenga spoof popular in the Arab countries

Italy´s Berlusconi has his bunga bunga. Now his (former) friend Gaddafi has his zenga zenga. The spoof  created by an Israeli journalist, is according to the New York Times a hit in the arab world.

     Watch the zenga zenga here:

Governor Chris Christie - a politician for the future

(Image by Hoboken Condos)

This blog does not usually cover domestic policy in the US - or any other country. It is the time to make an exception, because there is a governor in New Jersey, Chris Christie, who deserves to be more wellknown outside of the US, particularly in Europe. The governor´s fight for fiscal responsibility in his state is exactly what the US needs - and what is needed also in most European countries, which still are doing far too little in addressing spiraling welfare costs.

The New York Times´s well-written profile is a good introduction to the thinking and agenda of this fascinating former federal prosecutor. Here are a couple of excerpts:

What makes Christie compelling to so many people isn’t simply plain talk or swagger, but also the fact that he has found the ideal adversary for this moment of economic vertigo. Ronald Reagan had his “welfare queens,” Rudy Giuliani had his criminals and “squeegee men,” and now Chris Christie has his sprawling and powerful public-sector unions — teachers, cops and firefighters who Christie says are driving up local taxes beyond what the citizenry can afford, while also demanding the kind of lifetime security that most private-sector workers have already lost.
It may just be that Christie has stumbled onto the public-policy issue of our time, which is how to bring the exploding costs of the public workforce in line with reality.
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The centerpiece of Christie’s frenzied agenda, which passed the Democratic-­controlled Legislature last July, is a strict cap on local property taxes, which will be allowed to rise no more than 2 percent every year. When combined with a reduction in state aid, what this means, practically speaking, is that New Jersey’s townships and cities will have to hold the line when negotiating municipal labor contracts if they want to remain solvent, because they can’t rely on either their residents or the state for more money.
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The crux of Christie’s argument is that public-sector contracts have to reflect what has happened in the private sector, where guaranteed pensions and free health care are becoming relics. It’s not surprising that this stand has ingratiated Christie to conservatives in Washington; advocacy groups and activists on the right have carried out a long campaign to discredit the ever-shrinking labor movement in the private sector, and what Christie has done, essentially, is to blast his way into the final frontier, taking on the public-sector unions that have come to wield enormous political power. More surprising is how the governor’s proposals are finding sympathy from less-partisan budget experts, if only because they don’t see obvious alternatives. “I’ve tried to look at this objectively, and I just don’t know of any other option,” says Richard Keevey, who served as budget director for a Democratic governor, Jim Florio, and a Republican governor, Tom Kean. “You couldn’t tax your way out of this.”
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The most sophisticated communicators of the modern era hammer at a consistent argument about their moment and the response it demands, and they choose carefully constructed metaphors to make the choices ahead seem obvious — think of Ronald Reagan’s morning in America, or Bill Clinton’s bridge to the 21st century. And Christie’s communications strategy is about as sophisticated as any you will find in American politics right now.

Read the entire New York Times profile here.

PS
Another interesting article on Christie by the NJ Star-Ledger.

Putin´s puppet blames the West for plotting revolution against Russia

No more Mr. Nice

Putin´s puppet, also know as president Dmitry Medvedev, has finally got tired of playing the good cop. Probably on the orders of his master, Medvedev has now dropped his soft,  "liberal" style, which used to be so cherished by a number of Western leaders:

President Dmitry Medvedev’s ominous comments on Tuesday in Vladikavkaz that there are outside forces plotting a revolution against Russia sound eerily like the comments made by then-President Vladimir Putin after the Beslan hostage tragedy in 2004. In a televised address to the nation, Putin said there were certain forces — clearly hinting at the United States — that wanted to emasculate Russia as a nuclear power and “seize its juiciest parts.”

The Moscow Times concludes:

Perhaps the president is tired of playing the role of good cop in the tandem with Putin. Nice guys finish last, after all. In the end, there is nothing like a fresh conspiracy theory to boost a Russian leader’s popularity among the masses. It always worked for Putin.

Read the entire article here.

UN Security Council agrees sanctions on Gaddafi regime

Finally, the UN Security Council was able to agree on sanctions against the criminal Gaddafi regime. After the Security Council resolution was announced, Libya´s UN ambassador Abdurrahman Shalgam (who has deserted Gaddafi) was optimistic, hoping that the sanctions would "help put an end to this fascist regime, which is still in existence in Tripoli."

Although the UN decision was welcomed by most, it is worth noting that the sanctions do not e.g. include imposing a no-fly zone, something which has been discussed by US and its allies. It is quite possible that the now agreed sanctions are not tough enough in order to really hurt the Gaddafi regime. Turkey´s Prime Minister Erdogan for example warned on Saturday that sanctions would do more harm to Libya´s people than to Gaddafi. He may very well be right.

(image by UN)

Russia´s huge rearmament programme

Intoxicated by the (temporary) rise of the price of oil due to the events in the Middle East and North Africa, the ruler of Russia, Vladimir Putin, has decided to upgrade the country´s Soviet-era military instead of trying to invest in improving the lot of millions of poor people in his country:

MOSCOW: Russia has unveiled the biggest rearmament program since the fall of the Soviet Union, saying that it intends to buy 600 planes, 100 ships and 1000 helicopters within the next decade.
The ambitious overhaul will cost the equivalent of $650 billion. European countries are meanwhile cutting defence spending to try to balance their national budgets.
But with oil prices rising, Russia, the world's biggest energy exporter, feels confident it can afford to upgrade its dilapidated Soviet-era military and believes it urgently needs to do so to confirm its self-proclaimed status as a leading world power.

Read the entire story here.

Even if Russia would actually be able to get all this modern weaponry, it would would not be of much use due to the country´s Soviet style, corrupted conscription system:

Another Soviet military legacy is the system of obligatory conscription. While all other large European countries abolished military conscription in recent decades, Russia continues with a system in which all physically fit male citizens aged 18 to 27 must serve for 12 months. Exemptions are based on medical conditions and are given to university students and employees of certain organizations. About 500,000 young men are conscripted every year.

The system is unfair, inefficient and unpopular. According to the polling firm Public Opinion Foundation, 51 percent of Russians support abolishing conscription, and 67 percent are against extending the age of eligibility for the draft. The Russian military estimates the total number of draft dodgers to be close to 200,000. According to the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, the current rate for bribes to avoid conscription is as high as $5,000, while a typical lieutenant’s monthly salary is about $500.

Obligatory military service is inefficient because “free” conscript labor is much cheaper for the military than hiring civilians as, for example, cooks and cleaning personnel. Moreover, the military has no incentive to value conscripts’ lives and well-being. According to the Public Opinion Foundation, 79 percent of Russians perceive serious hazing and abuse of draftees as being widespread. Five of six respondents who served in the military since the 1990s were subject to abuse as soldiers. Since 2005, according to official statistics, 2,051 servicemen have committed suicide.

Read the entire article here.

One reason why Putin and his henchmen want to invest in the army and the security services is described by British top diplomat Tony Brenton, who served as UK ambassador to Russia in 2004 - 2008:

Egypt's revolution has disturbing implications for Russia.
There are huge differences between the two countries but the comparisons are still unsettling for Russia's elite.
Long ago I was a young diplomat in Cairo, and the cynicism I heard from Egypt's politically aware classes is almost exactly mirrored in Moscow now.
Both countries have run 'guided' democracies, dominated by electorally impregnable 'parties of power' and untouchable security establishments.
The elites find it hard to give up power; those who do are more likely to face corruption charges than honourable retirement.
Events in Egypt have already produced echoes in some of Russia's client states: Belarus, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
They are a timely reminder to the Russian establishment that the demand for freedom is universal, and will sooner or later have to be met.

PS
Putin seems to think that the demand for freedom in Russia can be suppressed with the help of new armaments, but he will be proved wrong, sooner rather than later ...